In these times when the pro-choice movement seems to be more at risk than in decades, it’s heartening to see a pro-choice website that is as large and active as Rh Reality Check. It covers not only pro-choice views, but also contraception, sex education, sexual health and just sex news in general.

It has a great attitude. All the writers are women, many of them young women, and many are Black, Hispanic or Asian.

The pro-choice movement really needs a shot in the arm nowadays, as its been under withering assault since the rightwing backlash started under Reagan in 1980. We have almost 30 years of rightwing blowback, and maybe the winds are finally shifting.

Taking the race of the anti-abortion folks into consideration, I would say that most of the anti-abortion folks are Whites, usually conservative Whites. I find it fascinating that almost all White nationalists and other racist Whites really hate abortion. Do they realize how many more Blacks and Hispanics would be born if there were no abortion, since Hispanics and especially Blacks have far more abortions proportionately than Whites?

Blacks, despite their religiosity, seem to be pro-choice, and Black women are more likely than non-Blacks to have abortions. Latinas are more likely to have abortions than non-Latinas, I believe that by the second generation or so, they are about as pro-choice as anyone, both unusual facts considering their Catholicism. In fact, Catholic women in general are more likely to have abortions than non-Catholics, which implies that a lot of Catholics think the Church is full of shit.

And most of the anti-abortion folks are coming from a religious point of view, which is interesting since neither the Bible nor Jesus deal with the issue at all. All it is says is, “Thou shalt not kill.”

But we kill all the time, in justified homicide by cops and folks defending themselves, in wars; Hell, nothing kills like capitalism itself. The US government has been funding and/or committing mass murder for a long time now. It’s called imperialism. We fund and advise death squads in the Third World and shower military aid on the most murderous fascist regimes. Then, every now and then, we start a war ourselves and slaughter lots of folks. We started a Nazi-like war of aggression in Iraq which has resulted in over 1 million deaths.

It’s also interesting that the anti-abortion idiots seem to love fetuses so much, but they don’t seem to give a fuck about kids as soon they done get themselves borned.

The fact that the anti-abortion crowd is coming from a usually fundamentalist religious point of view implies that their position is irrational. It can’t be justified by philosophical traditions outside of some Holy Book. Religion is fine, but we have separation of Church and State here, and religion is not supposed to guide public policy.

Even the Catholic Church itself allowed abortion until the time of “quickening” up until about the 17th Century. The opposition to it in toto is simply a Papal Canonical matter that is not necessarily consonant even with Catholic theology. Islam tends to take a pretty hands-off position to abortion, although the fundamentalists hate it.

Anti-abortion views are associated with fundamentalism, backwardness, obscurantism and in particular, anti-woman politics all over the world. Pro-choice societies are more scientific, rational, humane, modern and especially pro-woman than those who are not.

Buddhism and Hinduism don’t appear to take a stand on abortion.

I admit to being queasy about late term abortion, but if the life or the health (Not the mental health!) of the mother is truly or at risk, it’s reasonable. However, I don’t approve it in other circumstances, and using abortion as birth control, which I am convinced some of my female acquaintances have done, makes me ill. It’s still killing, not of a life, but of a potential life, and that is not a breezy matter.

13 responses to “Great Pro-Choice Site”

There is also a line that says something like, “I knew you in the womb.”

Personally, I have mixed feelings about abortion, and lean pro-Choice now.

I suspect that more Catholics get abortions since Mexicans are more likely to be Catholic.

There’s a guy out there named Singer who says that it is morally okay (and should be legal) to kill babies after they are born–even if they are healthy–he argues that their personhoood, their brain is not developed–he is right there but wrong overall–since it is murder.

I guess 2 year olds have about the same IQ as a dog. Suppose someone cannot develop an IQ beyond that of a dog. In which case, would euthanizing a dog be any more justifiable than euthanizing a tax-draining human? Or would people be engaging in specism?

I also do not like the idea of late-term abortion, especially if the baby would otherwise be viable outside the womb! Of course, even pro-lifers are for abortion if it means that the woman could die.

RL:”I guess 2 year olds have about the same IQ as a dog … A 1 1/2 yr old is as smart as a cat.”

That’s a crock of shit. Even though they can be rather intelligent compared to other animals or mammals which are generally much less sentient, dogs or cats can’t use language (speak or read or write), nor can they use complex tools, etc like a 2 and/or 11 year old can if he/she is taught to do so.

‘I have heard the argument that if someone really believes that abortion is murder, than it would be reprehensible to not kill abortion doctors.

The fact is, either people think that abortion is murder, and do not want to stop it, i.e., because it is illegal, and would take grisly measures to do so, etc. (And if abortion is murder, how is it different than opening fire on a playground, in which case, wouldn’t an armed adult be morally obligated to use lethal force against the shooter?)

Or, They do not, deep down, really believe that abortion is murder so that is why lethal force is not used to prevent abortion.

But on second thought, the same thing could be said about wars. Some people are peaceniks who believe in peace at any cost, because people, including kids die in wars. But they and others, who may simply be against a war, for reasons other than being peaceniks, may not be willing to use lethal force to stop the war from taking place. So the same argument can be used against many anti-war groups that can be used against many pro-lifers.’

RL:“On race, I would say that most of the anti-abortion folks are Whites, usually conservative Whites. I find it fascinating that almost all White nationalists and other racist Whites really hate abortion. Do they realize how many more Blacks and Hispanics would be born if there were no abortion, since Hispanics and especially Blacks have far more abortions proportionately than Whites?”

I agree, and I’ve been saying the same thing for years. If abortion hadn’t been around (both legally and illegally), the USA would currently be swarming with tens of millions more criminal Blacks, parasitic Hispanics, retarded Whites, etc. That obviously wouldn’t be a good thing by any stretch of the imagination.

It’s only the idiotic Judeo-Christian fundamentalists and other hyper-religious morons who oppose abortion via their pathetic appeals to “mercy” or some kind-of “higher morality.” Abortion has already done eugenic wonders in preventing many low-IQ non-Whites (and low-IQ Whites, too) from breeding out-of-control within White countries. Why is that a bad thing?

It’s just good ol’ plain common sense to support abortion in order to control the numbers of less-desirable humans (it just so happens that those tend to mostly be non-Whites).

Do not take that this to mean that I support the widespread abortion of healthy White fetuses that is occurring in some White countries…I do not support the widespread abortion of healthy White fetuses AT ALL – I want to see as many healthy and intelligent White babies born and raised as is possible in our increasingly non-White world.

I also support euthanasia for babies born (of all races) who are retarded, deformed, diseased, or otherwise defective; if it’s obvious that a baby cannot and will never function at at least an average/normal level, it should be humanely put down. Forget abstractions like “pity” and “sympathy” – our world is increasingly resource-scarce because of overpopulation, and thus humanity can ill-afford to burden our precious natural resources (which are needed by the healthy and intelligent humans who are capable of maintaining a decent world) via the anti-civilizational addition of even more ‘worthless eaters.’

Robert, aside from WP’s eugenicist views on why abortion is a good thing for the US, I’m assuming your position on abortion come from the position of an individual’s right to choose what they do with their own body.

Why can’t you extend that concept to every aspect of a human’s life? Why can’t we be free from government telling us what do, always?

It does seem to be the case that the use of the Bible to guide public policy doesn’t work well. If I had to guess, I’d tend to think that God would want nothing to do with human institutions and wouldn’t be concerned with politics. I just mean that it wouldn’t be a matter of God backing one candidate over another. I tend to think that God would just as soon abolish both political parties as walk across the room, to put it in those terms. I don’t presume to know, though, but I can’t help guessing.

I don’t mean to suggest that both political parties are equally bad, but I just meant that I agree with the statements, in the posting, about the Bible potentially being a problematic thing to use as a guide for public policy, etc.

I’ve been really down on the political parties lately. They can’t seem to get anything done, and I don’t think the health care “reform” is going to accomplish much. People need to come up with some new philosophical underpinnings to the Republican party.

Pandering to racist “sensibilities” just so they support the pro-choice side is about the worst strategical move I can imagine. One can just as well say racists should be pro-lifers, since that way more Latinas and black women would die in illegal clinics or performing at-home abortions. But going further, if you pay too much attention to what racists want, you will end up with forcible sterilization of “racial inferiors” and strict forbiddance of abortion on “white” women. That’s what in the end they dream for.